There is nothing more terrifying than not knowing if your loved ones will be okay. I knew that feeling very clearly on the day of my younger brother’s birth. Rowan’s birth will always be something special to me, something that I will never forget.
The day started out normal. I didn’t have school that day, which was a relief. I was watching American Dad on TV. When my mom came into the room. She was on her lunch break, so it wasn’t all that strange. She went into the bathroom, and after only a few minutes, she began yelling for my dad. “There’s a lot of blood in my underwear.” She said, and I got up from the couch. Did something bad happen? Did. . .
I stood there in the doorway to the bathroom as my parents got ready to go to the hospital. My dad went into my brother’s room, to tell him to get his shoes on because we’re going to the hospital. I looked up at my mother, and before I knew it, I felt like crying.
“Is—is something wrong with Rowan?” My mom looked at me as if she had forgotten that I was still there. “No, there isn’t anything wrong with him.” She said simply, and I took that as an answer. There wasn’t anything else to it. Rowan and my mother were fine. I knew they would be.
When we get to the hospital, we are put inside the c-section room. The hallways were dark, and there was no one else back there. It made me scared. My mom was being pushed away in a wheelchair even though it might not have been necessary. For the first thirty minutes, I sat beside my older brother, fairly close to the door, until my grandmother got there, and he opted for standing. The room looked like a regular hotel room, except there was only one bed, and there were only enough chairs for three people. When the doctor and the nurse entered the room, it only took a few minutes for them to ask me, my brother, and my grandmother, to leave, only for a moment while my mother, father, and the doctor discussed what had to be done. They made sure to be very polite about it, of course, and for that, I was grateful.
We stayed just outside the door waiting for them to finish. Grandma sat down in the wheelchair that they had used to wheel around my mom, and for a moment, I wanted to say something about it but then decided against it. It would just make her angry, and then she’d say something along the lines of, “Oh, your mom isn’t using it anymore.” I glanced over at my brother, to see if he caught it, but he was still on his phone. It was only a few minutes later that we were allowed back into the room, where for most of the time, a heavy silence continued. There wasn’t really much to say, even when it might lighten up the mood and break the tension. Whatever they must have heard was extreme.
Then, Mom said, “I’m going to be having a c-section.” That made sense, but that didn’t make me feel any better as a wave of dread crashed into me. God, what if Rowan ended up like me when he was born? Or what if he turned out worse? What if he died, what if—
No, he’s going to be fine. He’s going to be better. And he would be. He would be fine, he would be okay, and he wasn’t going to give Mom a heart attack over whether he would live or not.
After about an hour, we’ve already had to leave the room about three times. My grandma is sick of it, and honestly, that annoys me. They’ve been polite about it, even making a few jokes about how they’re sorry that they’ve had to kick us out so many times. Oh well, it doesn’t matter, because she’s kind of like that with anyone and everyone. No matter who it is, if they’re her friend or not, she’ll be nitpicky to the point of annoyance. I should be used to that by now, but it still doesn’t sink in. “We’re going to be here for another few hours,” Mom says after a few minutes. It isn’t very sudden, because it’s probably all something we knew would happen because of course she would. She’s going to have to have a c-section. “Preemie, do you want to stay, or would you want to go home with Aiden?” And honestly, I want to go home. I want to go home because I don’t want to sit in the waiting room with other people (who will probably all be adults or children younger than me) for hours on end. But at the same time, I don’t want to leave Mom and Dad alone during her surgery.
I want to be there when he’s born. I continue to just stare at my mother, who smiles at me. It’s that supportive make-your-own-choice smile that I know very well. The smile she always gives me when she knows that I’m struggling with a choice. “It’s okay, I won’t be mad at you, no matter what you decide.” So, my decision is made for me. She won’t be mad if I go home, because she knows that I don’t like being around random people for too long. “Uh… I’ll go with Aiden, then.” She nods, and I look back at Dad. He just looks anxious, an exact mirror of how I feel. Do I look like that? I wonder, but I don’t dwell on that. I go over and I hug my Dad like I used to do every day before he left for work. He used to work nights, so I would see him when I got back from school, but now I rarely ever do it anymore. “Bye, Dad. You better text me a picture of him.” Dad hugs me back, giving my back a few gentle pats before he pulls away. “Bye, honey. Love you.”
“Love you too.”
The drive home is spent in silence. There isn’t really anything to say, so there isn’t any point in making small talk. Besides, I really don’t like small talk. When we finally make it home, Aiden is quick to change into his work clothes, and he leaves me there by myself. For maybe two hours, I just sit there mindlessly, playing random games on my phone, when I get a notification. It’s a picture from Dad, of a small, round-faced baby. The infant has wet dark brown hair, and his face is red. He looks almost calm, with his eyes closed.
Hey, he’s ok.
And I burst into tears because suddenly I could feel a weight lifting from my chest. He’s okay, Mom is okay, and he isn’t in any danger. My little brother is alive, and Dad must have him. I don’t know how long I just sit there, sobbing to myself at the fact that Rowan is okay, alive and well, and (hopefully) in Dad’s arms. All I remember is that the next thing I know, I’m throwing on my shoes, scrambling to get out the door, because Grandma is in the driveway waiting for me. We’re going to go to the hospital to see Rowan.
When we arrived at the hospital, it had been about thirty minutes. We had gone to KFC for dinner, and it had taken forever. Dad’s in the waiting room, so we sit down and eat. Grandma insists on saving her roll for Mom, but I keep telling her, “She doesn’t like KFC. It’s okay,” but she’s determined. So I just drop it; it’s useless to try to fight with her. When Dad goes outside for a smoke break, I go with him. I’ve always hated it when he smokes, but it’s not like he’s ever listened. We’ve been trying for years to get him to quit, but no luck. We go outside, and we just sit on the bench. The smell of smoke is familiar, but still, it suffocates me. It fills my throat, and my nose, and every time I’m around him when he smokes, I want to gag. It doesn’t take long for the cup of soda he has to be completely drained, and when we go back inside, my entire body still feels numb, filled with helium. The relief has passed, and now, there isn’t anything there to fill the void. For almost the entire day, I had been so scared. So scared that Rowan would turn out terrible, that his birth would be a miracle, just like mine. That he would be just like me.
But now, I knew he was fine, so there wasn’t any need for that dread. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, supposed to feel. Then, after another ten minutes, we’re allowed into Mom’s room.
She’s cradling him to her chest, and she looks like she’s just run a marathon. There’s an IV in her arm, and I wince when I see the bruise. She smiles, a tired gesture, and I sit myself in the chair closest to the door. Grandma sits in the chair beside me. This is a different room than before, I notice. It looks fairly similar, but there’s a closet and a bathroom. There’s a blue rocking chair in the corner, too. Grandma is already fawning over him, cooing that he’s so precious and that he already has so much hair. I ignore her, instead just opting to stare at my little brother. My little brother. Never thought I would ever get to say that, let alone think it. It feels good to know that I had nothing to worry about. Sure, his birth had been a real surprise, but what isn’t?
And yeah, that was the birth of my brother. It’s been about two months since my baby brother was born, and Rowan’s birth taught me that you don’t have to constantly worry about everything, no matter how suddenly it might come because it might just be something that changes your life for the better.